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Do frailty and cognitive impairment affect dual-task cost during walking in the oldest old institutionalized patients?

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Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate dual-task costs in several elderly populations, including robust oldest old, frail oldest old with MCI, frail oldest old without MCI, and frail elderly with dementia. Sixty-four elderly men and women categorized into frail without MCI (age 93.4 ± 3.2 years, n = 20), frail with MCI (age 92.4 ± 4.2 years, n = 13), robust (age 88.2 ± 4.1 years, n = 10), and patients with dementia (age 88.1 ± 5.1 years, n = 21). Five-meter gait ability and timed-up-and-go (TUG) tests with single and dual-task performance were assessed in the groups. Dual-task cost in both 5-m habitual gait velocity test and TUG test was calculated by the time differences between single and dual-task performance. The robust group exhibited better 5-m gait and TUG test performances in the single and dual-task conditions compared with the other three groups (P < 0.001), and the frail and frail + MCI groups exhibited better performances than the dementia group (P < 0.001). No significant differences were observed between the frail and frail + MCI groups. However, all groups exhibited lower gait velocities in the verbal and arithmetic task conditions, but the dual-task cost of the groups were similar. Robust individuals exhibited superior single and dual-task walking performances than the other three groups, and the frail and frail + MCI individuals exhibited performances that were superior to those of the patients with dementia. However, the dual-task costs, i.e., the changes in gait performance when elderly participants switch from a single to a dual task, were similar among all four of the investigated groups. Therefore, these results demonstrated that the magnitude of the impairment in gait pattern is independent of frailty and cognitive impairment status.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Spanish Department of Health and Institute Carlos III of the Government of Spain [Spanish Net on Aging and frailty; (RETICEF)] under grant numbered RD12/043/0002].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Exercise Research Laboratory, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil

    Eduardo L. Cadore

  2. Division of Geriatric Medicine, Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra, Pamplona, Navarra, Spain

    Alvaro Casas-Herrero

  3. Department of Health Sciences, Public University of Navarra, Campus of Tudela, Av. de Tarazona s/n., 31500, Tudela, Navarra, Spain

    Fabricio Zambom-Ferraresi, Ana B. Bays Moneo & Mikel Izquierdo

  4. Mathematics Department, Public University of Navarra, Navarre, Spain

    Alicia Martínez-Ramírez, Nora Millor & Marisol Gómez

Authors
  1. Eduardo L. Cadore
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  2. Alvaro Casas-Herrero
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  7. Ana B. Bays Moneo
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  8. Mikel Izquierdo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mikel Izquierdo.

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All subjects or their legal guardians agreed to participate in the trial and completed an ethical consent form. The study was conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Public University of Navarra, Spain.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Cadore, E.L., Casas-Herrero, A., Zambom-Ferraresi, F. et al. Do frailty and cognitive impairment affect dual-task cost during walking in the oldest old institutionalized patients?. AGE 37, 124 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-015-9862-1

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